3 Game-Changing Tips for Sales Leaders

3 Game-Changing Tips for Sales Leaders

In the State of Digital Selling with LinkedIn 2019, we surveyed 862 sales reps across different industries to learn how they use LinkedIn. From the findings, we concluded three game-changers that sales leaders should know about selling with LinkedIn. These key points can help you improve your selling strategy and become an effective sales coach for your sales team.

Watch the video to learn these three game changers and three tips on how to successfully help your sales team leverage LinkedIn!

Modern Selling for the Modern Buyer

Modern B2B buyers perform more independent research before connecting with a sales rep to inquire about a service that can address their pain points. That research includes trying to identify their needs, searching for available solutions, and analyzing their options. In other words, they’re searching for the company and the people who can solve their specific challenges.

To improve the performance of your team, sales leaders must consider two elements.

First, sales leaders need to teach their team how to improve their chances of being found on digital channels. Then, you need to keep them motivated to consistently leverage the social platforms to find, engage, and connect with prospects.

Second, marketing leaders should supply branded materials and helpful content to enable the sales team when engaging with target prospects. LinkedIn banners, native LinkedIn profile content with buyer-centric messaging that are keyword-optimized, and content for sales are among some of the elements that marketing should consistently supply the sales team.

As you can see, the sales and marketing leaders should align their efforts to achieve the overall goal of a company, which is to boost win rates.

3 Tips for Sales Leaders

The State of Digital Selling with LinkedIn 2019 reveals how sales professionals currently use LinkedIn. We analyzed the results and came up with ten actionable steps that can help an organization become better at using LinkedIn as a platform to sell.

Below are the three game-changing tips for sales and marketing leaders.

1. Help Your Sellers Understand LinkedIn

Linkedin is often misunderstood by salespeople. They still view it as a place to post their digital resume. But that will not help them build their personal brand or generate more high-quality leads.

62% of B2B buyers look for an informative LinkedIn profile when considering whether or not to engage with a sales rep. When a prospect arrives on the LinkedIn profiles of your sales team, what do they see? Is the content filled with me-centric messaging, such as “Quota-Crusher” or “great negotiator?” If that’s the case, the prospect will more than likely move on to the next profile. Or, is it even worse and your sellers have NOTHING on their profiles.

Either way, they are completely missing an opportunity to connect with buyers.

As a sales leader, what can you do?

The most important aspect is teaching your sellers how to leverage their LinkedIn profiles. Instead of a resumé, help them understand the importance of buyer-centric messaging that shows who they help and how they help. By turning their profiles into a resource, they gain visibility and build their credibility.

When the modern buyer sees that your reps are knowledgeable, have relevant experience, and are industry thought-leaders, they are more likely to engage with them.

2. Empower Your Salespeople with Marketing Gear

Your marketing department should take an active role in optimizing your sales reps’ profiles by providing them with messaging to add to their profiles. This ensures that your sellers’ profiles are in line with your company’s branding and are optimized for the target audience.

Sales leaders need to align with marketing leaders about streamlining the supply of company-branded content and content for sales for your sales team.

One example is the LinkedIn profile background. This is your seller’s chance to make a lasting impression above the fold. Maximizing it to display your company’s website, logo, contact information, and brand messaging can build brand awareness.

Another example would be rich media assets such as videos and whitepapers, which your sellers can upload on their summary and experience sections. These types of content can help your reps develop trust and credibility as the prospects browse their profiles looking for solutions to their pain points.

LinkedIn is home to 645 million users, and more than 153 million of those users are decision-makers and senior-level influencers. Don’t miss simple branding opportunities to enhance your company’s image and build the credibility of your sellers.

3. Make Digital Sales Training a Priority

In the video, I discuss that selling with LinkedIn is not rocket science. However, there is more to learn about social selling than what can be covered in a one-day workshop.

First, there is a behavior change that needs to take place in order to have a new sales mindset and successfully implement digital selling techniques.

Second, you need to give ample time for your sales reps to digest and practice digital selling through a training program given by a dedicated sales training company to see results.

Training is delivered in micro-learning experiences that are spread out over several weeks to successfully impact a sales rep’s selling behavior, thus becoming an effective modern seller. To increase your sales pipeline and win rates, you must dedicate the time to learn digital selling techniques and implement them to improve results.

Successful Sales Teams Have Effective Sales Coaches

Once your sellers acquire the right gear and bait, there’s still another step to achieving digital selling success. Even with the right tools, your sellers need to have feedback of their performance to continually improve.

This is where effective sales coaching becomes so important. By combining structured and unstructured coaching conversations, you can pinpoint areas for improvement for each individual rep. This is how you turn sellers’ weaknesses into strengths.

Learn How to Leverage LinkedIn Today!

Sales leaders, if you can help your sellers understand the opportunities that LinkedIn presents, have marketing provide materials and messaging, and make digital sales training a priority, your team will have the necessary tools to succeed. By implementing digital selling techniques with your sales team, you give them an opportunity to build their personal brand, create more sales conversations, and generate high-quality leads.

Bernie Borges

Bernie Borges is CMO of Vengreso, the leader in digital sales transformation. He's also Host of the award winning Modern Marketing Engine podcast. His book Marketing 2.0, was an early playbook in social media strategy. Bernie is also a trainer and speaker. He has a passion for guiding clients in aligning marketing and sales for accelerated revenue results. Bernie enjoys kayaking with his family in Tampa Bay, going to hockey games and you'll find him at the gym at 6am Monday through Friday, rain or shine.

Comments

I love this topic, Bernie. Our sales team has had tremendous success with social selling and our reps really enjoy making quality connections with others. You made such a great point about making digital sales training a priority when it comes to digital selling. When our team decided to really dive into social selling we used our sales training software to create an entire lesson on social selling and how reps can maximize and leverage LinkedIn to make connections and progress deals. It’s also been a great way to highlight really good examples of social selling so reps can see what success looks like. We also use it to incorporate practice scenarios for social selling so reps can hone their skills in different situations and it’s been a huge hit too. For any tea that’s considering social selling, I strongly recommend incorporating these ideas into your strategy! Thanks for sharing.

Hi Rachel,
Thanks for sharing what’s working for your sales team. At Vengreso we have a saying: “the modern buyer requires a modern seller.” In our experience training over 140,000 sales professionals, training “that sticks” is never a one-and-done event. Xerox says that 87% of sales training knowledge is lost within 30 days! You may have noticed links in this post to our digital selling training. It’s our business. 😉

Thanks for taking the time to share your experience. Keep up the good work!